From today’s Washington Post:

Editor Fired as Cartoon Controversy Goes Global

As European Newspapers republished controversial images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad from a Danish daily, the cultural conflict between the Islamic world and the West over the drawings continued to flare around the world….

…”The cartoons include an image of the Prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, and another portraying him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle,” according to Agence France-Press. “A third pictured a middle-aged prophet standing in the desert with a walking stick, in front of a donkey and a sunset.” …

…”Islam forbids any representation of the Prophet,” the paper’s front page editorial says today. “The question is, are all those who are not Muslims obliged to honour that prohibition? Can you imagine a society that added up all the prohibitions of the different religions? What would remain of the freedom to think, to speak, or even to come and go freely?” More…

While there is much to be said for the logic of the statement in the final paragraph, nonetheless I must take the position that the subsequent publications of the cartoons are totally out of line. They smack of a grade-schooler’s “Oh…you don’t like that, huh? Well, how do you like this?“

The publication by the Danes may well have been an honest mistake. One assumes that Danish editors are not exactly up on Muslim tabus–though, perhaps, one could argue that they ought to be. But when papers in four other countries, entirely aware that the Muslim community has been violently aroused, do so after the fact, there is no excuse. It is gratuitous insult, couched in the language of “freedom of the press.”

If the defensive editors had their wits and ethics about them, they would have registered their protests without further stirring up the fire. To exacerbate an already dangerous situation is the height of poor judgement, and any deaths or injuries that result are as attributable to their excesses as to those of the Islamic fanatics who commit them.

There is no doubt that the reactions of certain of The Prophet’s followers are…well…uncivilized at best, on occasion. That the editors, knowing that, chose to provoke them further is inexcusable.